"Liberation"

If I had the Ural Mountains, if we possessed Siberia, if we had the Ukraine, then Nazi Germany would be swimming in prosperity.

So said Adolf Hitler at Nuernberg in 1936. Last week Fuehrer Hitler, after a year of magnificent triumphs, could still not see any likelihood of getting his hands on the faraway Urals. If there was any grabbing to be done in Siberia, Japan rather than Germany would do it. But the Ukraine was different. There the signs were getting plainer and plainer that Fuehrer Hitler thought the time was approaching when the Ukraine--which includes parts of Poland and Rumania as well as of Soviet Russia--would be ripe for Nazi plucking.

With the reduction of Czecho-Slovakia last autumn to a German puppet state forced to do Nazi Germany's bidding, the real frontiers of Germany were moved 300 miles eastward. They now touch Rumania, front on Polish Ukrainian districts, reach within 90 miles of the Soviet Union.

After Munich, Ruthenia, easternmost district of Czecho-Slovakia, now called the Carpatho-Ukraine, became an "autonomous" region with only loose connections with Prague but with very definite though unofficial links with Berlin. Mountainous and largely barren, the Carpatho-Ukraine was obviously expected to produce for Germany political rather than economic results. The Nazis' Ukrainian blueprints nominated it as the generating centre for a movement to "liberate" all Ukrainians from their present Polish, Rumanian and Russian masters and bring them under the benevolent protection of Fuehrer Hitler.

Well-heeled Nazi organizers began to appear in Chust, capital of the Carpatho-Ukraine. A military mission arrived to teach the hastily arming Ruthenians the art of warfare. A Ukrainian "Free Corps" was formed, while the Carpatho-Ukrainian militia named their organization after Colonel Eugene Konovaletz, former Ukrainian leader murdered in Amsterdam last year when an assassin, rumored to be of the Soviet secret police, placed a time bomb in his overcoat pocket.

Last week 4,000 Nazi soldiers were reported to have made their way across Czecho-Slovakia to Ruthenia, a plain warning by Fuehrer Hitler that Nazi Germany will tolerate no impulses by neighboring Hungary and Poland to invade the Carpatho-Ukraine and establish a common frontier. Ukrainian broadcasts are sent daily from Germany. These broadcasts and the Nazi press in Germany incessantly campaign for "Freedom for the Ukraine."

White Help. Figuring also in Fuehrer Hitler's plans are White Russians who fled from Russia when the Bolsheviks came to power. Herr Hitler would certainly prefer to see Russians fight Russians rather than spill good Nazi blood in his Ukrainian "liberation campaign." Estimated to be 400,000 strong, the White Russians, though scattered, are numerous enough and sufficiently experienced to be of military and propaganda value. Not a few are now in Berlin, where Unter den Linden cafes have buzzed with their plottings.

Main Berlin White Russian plotter is handsome old General Pavlo Skoropadsky, onetime Tsarist general, for six months Hetman (head man) of the short-lived Republic of the Ukraine, formed in early 1918 by the German Imperial Government. Another White Russian espionage centre is Prague, where White Russian Cossack General P. C. Popov operates. He has recently visited Belgrade, Budapest and Sofia, rounding up old "patriots" for service in the coming Ukrainian campaign. Significant it is that many White Russians of known anti-Communist leanings have found good "jobs" in "poor" Ruthenia.

Borderland. The Ukrainian districts of Eastern Europe constitute a huge hunk of southeastern Poland (Galicia), a narrow slice of northern Rumania (northern Bessarabia), the eastern tip of Czecho-Slovakia (Ruthenia) and the most fertile and second most populous of the eleven major constituent states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Ukrainian S.S.R.). No great loss would it be for Czechoslovakia to lose undeveloped Ruthenia, with only 550,000 inhabitants, to a Hitler-inspired "Greater Ukraine." Rumania also could well survive after her Ukrainian districts, with 800,000 inhabitants, had been detached. For Poland, however, the loss of eastern Galicia, with her 5,400,000 Ukrainians, would be irreparable, while for Russia the forcible detachment of 32,600,000 Ukrainians, plus 7,000,000 other nationals living in the area, would be catastrophic (see map).

The history of the Ukraine (meaning borderland) dates back to the 16th Century when thousands of "Little Russian" or Ukrainian fugitives fled from Poland to the banks of the Dnepr and there established the State of Dnepr Cossacks. Exasperated by successive Polish invasions, they finally appealed to Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich at Moscow for protection and placed themselves under his sovereignty. The Cossack nobility fused with the Russian nobility, the Ukrainian peasantry soon became an assimilated part of the Russian peasantry and for nearly 300 years there was little difference between the Little Russians of the Ukraine and the Great Russians or Muscovites.

The Ukrainian separatist movement of the 19th Century was little more than a dream fostered by a few Galician intellectuals. During the World War it became a German-imported article which reached its greatest success when the Tsar was overthrown, the Russian armies collapsed and German Warlords Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff decided that the Ukraine would be a good bread basket for Germany's starving armies. At the fortress of Brest-Litovsk (now in Poland) on March 3, 1918, a Russian delegation signed a humiliating treaty which detached from All the Russias not only Finland and the White Russian provinces of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia but also the valued Ukraine. Leon Trotsky had been the chief Soviet figure during the negotiations. The Bolshevik delegation had included a soldier, sailor, peasant, worker.

Tough Nuts. The story of the prolonged Brest-Litovsk negotiations and the subsequent short but eventful history of the Ukrainian Republic is told in a scholarly book by British Author John W. Wheeler-Bennett, The Forgotten Peace.* The moral drawn by Mr. Wheeler-Bennett suggests that Herr Hitler may find himself swimming in trouble rather than prosperity should his Ukrainian campaign be successful.

The Ukrainian peasant is a tough nut to crack. At a time when they could least be spared from the western front, 500,000 soldiers of Germany and Austria-Hungary were needed to keep the Ukraine in order. Moreover, the Ukrainian peasant was not enthusiastic about feeding the Germans at the front. For the 1918 harvest they tried to trick the Germans by planting just enough for their own needs. Only 42,000 truck loads of grain were exported from the Ukraine during the entire period of German-Austrian occupation.

The Allied victory automatically nullified the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the Ukrainian Republic, after a feeble struggle, folded up to become again a part of Russia. Ten years later Joseph Stalin, starting his collective-farming program, also found the Ukrainian peasant a stubborn creature. Confronted with similar sabotage, the Stalin Government simply confiscated the Ukrainian grain, left the peasants to starve. Some 3,000,000 of them did.

In addition to the Russian Ukraine's traditional obstinacy Germany would encounter the fact that the Ukraine of 1938 is not only rich but apparently pretty well satisfied. Iron, steel, machine-building and chemical industries dot the Donetz region. Kharkov, birthplace and longtime capital of the Soviet Ukraine, is an industrial city specializing in farm equipment. Instead of growing only wheat, the Ukraine's rich, black soil now produces sugar beets, flax, cotton. Fully 96% of the land is now collectivized. From the Ukraine come some of the Soviet's best-known figures: Alexei Stakhanov, author of the speed-up system, Maria Demchenko, champion sugar-beet raiser, Valentin Kataev, Soviet author. The Ukrainian language, outlawed by the Tsar, is not only now allowed but fostered.

Coming Crisis. This week Father Augustin Volosin, Premier of Carpatho-Ukraine said in Prague: "Of course we Ukrainians feel that a nation like ours . . . must some day . . . form its own State,but . . . Carpatho-Ukraine cannot work for the creation of a Great Ukraine. Our little country is far too small. . . ."

Few recent discernible signs of separatist feeling have come from the Soviet Ukraine. Stalinist purges seem to have taken no more lives in the Ukraine than in some other parts of Russia. The same, however, cannot be said of Poland, where Ukrainian deputies recently were bold enough to demand autonomy for Galicia. The Nazi agitation for redistribution of land is likely to appeal to impoverished, disenfranchised, long-suffering Galician peasants. The Polish feudal rulers, caught between Naziism in the West and Communism in the East, are more likely, when faced with a final choice, to choose Hitler than Stalin.

Most likely spot for a new Eastern European crisis--which many Europeans expect in the spring--is the Polish Ukraine. A good start has already been made toward developing the crisis--a series of border incidents. It is possible that Poland will some day become provoked enough to strike back hard. Then Fuehrer Hitler would probably bluntly announce that he is responsible for the integrity of the Ruthenian borders. France would be reminded of the Polish-French Alliance and Soviet Russia, fearful of what might happen later to her own Ukraine, might be inclined to urge Polish resistance.

An insurrection in Galicia, supported by German guns, would burst out, and Poland would suddenly be faced with the alternative of surrender or war. If Poland (plus France and Russia) went to war with Germany, there is at least a 50-50 chance that Germany would win. Britain, having shown little interest in any further Eastern European developments, might choose to sit this war out with Italy. The Balkans might sit it out with Hungary, which is being Nazified as fast as Hitler can do it. Hitler's Push to the East thus has a pretty good chance of pushing on.

* Morrow, $5.

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